The rules of grief don’t get enough consideration before we are thrown into this bewilderment. Who is aware of the five stages (or is it 7) and the importance of refraining from making any significant decisions in the first year, if you’ve never done this before? Many experienced people will try to tell you these guidelines during the chaos. Still, you can barely see through your torment nevermind absorb the words of wisdom.
Whether you experience grief suddenly or you expect it, there is always paralyzing pain. Even if you somehow had the advanced notice of the proper rules of grief, it can be disorienting. How you work through it is another story altogether. Most of my 40’s were about finding the new, orphaned me. Who am I without a mother? How do I grieve appropriately? What exactly are the real rules of grief? Does it really matter, I’ve never been much of a rule-follower anyway?
Now an only child who has become the matriarch of her family begrudgingly. I’m angry that I didn’t have anyone to share stories of mom with except my children-who, honestly can’t possibly understand. I’m bitter that I didn’t have a sibling to take on some of the responsibilities associated with moms’ health and death. It was also devasting to feel disconnected from her siblings, who have never checked on me after the funeral. I may sound like a bratty child talking, but grief has its own rules. There is no controlling the process that your brain works through. So, I feel guilty for all of these reactions, even though I shouldn’t. It’s not what I signed up to be or do, so I struggle with the rules of grief.
Support for the Rules of Grief
It took eight months for me to attend a much-needed grief support group. The same one (couldn’t find any others) that my mother had frequented through the years after her husband died. A place where the counselors who befriended my mother knew me and felt my pain just by looking at me. This part of my anguish was the most difficult to trudge through, alone. These women brought back so many reminders of mom, and I instantly fell apart. I don’t think I stopped crying through the entire meeting. Or the subsequent ones I attended for a few months.
I highly recommend these groups to everyone. They are eye-opening. You each share your story (if you want) and feel cleansed by the time you leave. Sure, it doesn’t take away the pain, but honestly, nothing does. It’s just comforting to be surrounded by people who understand your shock at that time. I couldn’t speak my first few visits. Nor could I stop crying. With each story, I empathized and cried more. The tale of my mom was horrible to me, but some of those other stories made me realize how lucky I am to have lived MY story. Not that death is ever a lucky thing!
While at the first meeting, I listened to a mother tell the story of her daughters’ death from drugs at 19. There was also a man who lost his wife to suicide — another man who has been attending these meetings for three years since his wife died of cancer. A young 20 something-year-old lost her husband to a motorcycle accident, and I can go on and on. My heart broke with each tragedy shared. Admittedly, these people had it worse than me, I thought, but my suffering was no less agonizing. I still had to get through my nightmare.
The Perfect Storm
Even though I was taking steps to work through my grief, I start to have physical symptoms. I’m sure you’ve heard how your mind and heart can create your health or illness. Well, I experienced this first hand. Although it took a while to accept that my grief may be triggering the issues I was having. It all seemed like malarky to me.
I should preempt this part by explaining how healthy my life has been up to now. Other than developing seasonal allergies in my teens, I rarely got sick. I’m health conscious: eat well, exercise, and take supplements when needed, while also avoiding things that make you sick. Taking on an active role in my mother’s healthcare and very sick years taught me to keep vigilant against any chance of living my mothers’ life.
A few months after mom died, I developed a weird rash on the atlas area of my head/neck. With symptoms worsening, I shaved that part of my head (on the underside), so I could see and deal with it better. Having a large family tends to put mom issues on the back burner, so I just kept an eye on it for months. This small thing turned into large, oozing grossness that forced me to seek an answer. While psoriasis is not what someone might classify as a big deal, it was to me. Once you have an autoimmune disease, you are marked forever. I did not handle this well (I assumed the worst and started to anticipate cancer) and probably brought on a slew of other symptoms by not dealing with it emotionally.
Almost two years after mom’s death, I experienced symptoms of a heart attack while sitting in a new job orientation. This job was a big transition to move our family out of state. It was an excellent opportunity for me to better understand the crisis of maternal-fetal health by working at the ground level in a Johns Hopkins Hospital, but it came at a price. I didn’t believe the doctor who took thorough, empathetic care of me for many hours when he came back with a panic attack diagnosis.
My good friend and Naturopath explained it best: The Perfect Storm! So many stressors, including grief in a relatively short window collided with underlying issues I never knew, were present. Since anxiety or mental health disorders were never an issue, this was foreign to me. I thought I was physically dying, not having a mental breakdown. This part of my story deserves its blog independently, but the abbreviated version is this; anxiety and panic disorder became a large part of my life from this day forward.
More to the Story
Since I wasn’t convinced, I had these issues (especially because only crazy people had this, right?), I kept searching for other health answers. My Naturopathic friend and I went on a quest to find solutions. Vacillating between western and holistic medicine, I felt we were searching in all the right places and eventually did find Hashimoto’s (another autoimmune disease) and Lyme disease. Two more diagnoses that I dreaded to hear, due to the outcome.
They aren’t easily treatable, and finding health professionals well versed in Lyme is near impossible. Besides, which came first? Did the Lyme cause my mental health to deteriorate? Or the co-infections that came back positive? Did the untreated autoimmune thyroid cause anxiety and panic attacks? Especially since no one would treat my thyroid until two years, ago-which was six years of suffering. Honestly, I still don’t have answers for this part of my life. It’s a work in progress.
Life Must Go On
Through all the grief and new health issues, life had to go on. I still had to take part in all the ordinary things that everyone is doing day in and day out. Running a business, working for someone else, continuing education, raising a family, paying bills, are time consuming and exhausting. We moved out to DC and back in a year, then out of a rural area and into a local city 40 minutes away from our home the following year. Our family kept shrinking each move we made. None of the young adults wanted to move out of the safety of their hometown. We only had the three youngest traveling with us, and it was heart-wrenching to leave the others. Incidentally, the kids ages at this time were 6, 9, 16, 18, 20, 21 & 24 (& 4 y/o grandson). So many changes in too short a time.
It’s no joke trying to stay healthy physically and mentally for your family. Every bit of alone time I had in those first years after mom’s death, I cried! Sure, my kids saw me cry sometimes, and I still talked about her and looked at pictures and videos, but when you are truly by yourself, you can let go. It’s difficult to have teenagers and toddlers as a rule, but grieving while parenting them is a whole different animal.
My 40’s weren’t all terrible. A few kids graduated high school and college, got married, and had babies. We celebrate holidays and birthdays with my mom’s memories and pictures all around us, and this little honor brings about stories amongst us all.
They say the passing of time does make dealing with a loss a little lighter. Working through all the pain can take so many heartwrenching years. I’ve learned to float over the waves of despair in these past 9 years, occasionally crashing down on the shore. Somehow I have found a light at the end of the long dark tunnel on my own terms-regardless of the rules of grief.
